There was no time for kissing but she wanted him to know that in the future there would be. A kiss in so much loneliness was like a hand pulling you up out of the water, scooping you up from a place of drowning and into the reckless abundance of air. A kiss, another kiss.

At the time I thought this was my big chance for love, that I was going something very romantic and important, but looking back on it now, it all seems part of a very simple equation: I left the house where I lived with someone who loved me to go to the house of someone who did not love me at all.

The kind of love that offers its life so easily, so stupidly is always the love that is not returned.

I think that she is everything I have ever loved about our religion distilled down to fit into one person, everything about the faith that is both selfless and responsible.

If he'd been any other boy, and this was any other world, I would have kissed him. Nothing could have stopped me.

There are two kinds of people in this world. The kind who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don't.